Gregory Pulver

SPRING | 2022 – Director: Gemma Whelan

Irish immigrant Tim Finnegan has aspirations of being a writer but struggles to earn a living and provide for his baby son. Spurred on by family pressure and his own loss of dignity, he discovers the price he’s willing to pay to get ahead. A story in verse by a master weaver of tales, about the dark underside of the American Dream.

SPRING | 2022 – Director: Gregory Pulver & Andy christensen

Bobby is a single man surrounded by married couples on his 35th birthday. Through a series of vignettes featuring lovers and friends, Bobby tries to make sense of the institution of marriage and comes to terms with what it means to be alive.

SPRING | 2022 – DIRECTOR: Gemma WHELAN

Plaintiff James X confronts the defendants, Church and State, for injustices they perpetrated throughout his childhood. While awaiting his trial, James examines his confidential state files compiled over the previous 45 years, and takes us on a journey through the schools, courts, health boards, industrial schools, psychiatric hospitals and prisons. It is part of the secret history of Ireland in the last century.

SPRING | 2022 ONLINE – Director - LOGAN STARNES

The Public, also known as The Audience, is a play by the twentieth-century Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written between 1929 and 1930. The two complete manuscripts which once existed have not been found, and may be lost. All that is known is an earlier draft, missing an act.

FALL | 2019 – Director: SHAWN LEE

Tired of not living their ‘best life,’ six broken individuals gather at a wellness center in the middle of the woods for a weeklong silent retreat to breathe and reset. As the voice from an omniscient guru drones on in broken self-help speech, the attendees struggle to find their inner calm while awkwardly combating their mental and physical desires. Over the course of five days, the group inexpertly attempts to navigate through hurt feelings, crippling faux pas, and exposed vulnerabilities to reach enlightenment. Absurdly funny and profoundly poignant, Small Mouth Sounds encourages us all to put down the phone and just be in the moment.

SPRING | 2018 – DIRECTOR: JOANN JOHNSON

Eurydice is a 2003 play by Sarah Ruhl which retells the myth of Orpheus from the perspective of Eurydice, his wife. The story focuses on Eurydice's choice to return to earth with Orpheus or to stay in the underworld with her father. Ruhl made several changes to the original myth's story-line.

SPRING | 2017 – DIRECTOR: Dámaso rodriguez

The Humans tells the story of the quintessential family reunion: a group of people who love each other but still wrestle with basic human fears: old age, abandonment, poverty, and death.

FALL | 2017 – DIRECTOR: Adriana baer

In this inquisitive new drama, a family grapples with the difference between a life lived and a life remembered as 85-year-old Marjorie struggles to keep hold of her memories and identity, gently assisted by an artificial version of her late husband, Walter. An exploration of aging, memory and technology, MARJORIE PRIME peers into what lies ahead and how our past is rewritten to face today.

SPRING | 2016 – DIRECTOR: DáMASO Rodriguez

This comedic masterpiece spans the entirety of history, with one ordinary American family who lives through it all. Dad’s just invented the wheel, Cain is throwing rocks at the neighbor kid, mammoths and dinosaurs lounge in the family room and mom frets about how to get all those animals on the boat two by two. Through Ice Ages, biblical floods and political conventions, the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey perseveres. With a giant cast and time-set across the ages, this theatrical allegory captures the human spirit – of brilliance, idiocy and ultimately sweet survival.

The approach to this production was imagined from a television set from the midcentury, but needed to include an environment/setting that can move through the span of the timeline of this play. Bright colors and patterns were chosen for both sets and costumes. Each night a new group of board members and volunteers performed as the chorus in Act I, so several racks of “one-size-fits-many” costumes were needed to accommodate the nightly cast.

Fall | 2016 – By John Biguenet – Director - Gemma Whelan

A fairytale-twisted yarn of delightful humor and spine-tingling suspense conjures a spooky seasonal experience unlike any other. With Vana O’Brien in a tour-de-force solo performance, an Appalachian witch tells a heartfelt and poetic tale of her long life from first love, to heartache, to the hair-raising vengeance she wreaks upon those who’ve crossed her.

The setting, theater space and acting was very intimate so the costume attention to detail was of utmost importance. The text referenced many details about the costume including “stolen” things stitched into the skirt hem, trinkets around the neck and past childhood details about the underclothes. My approach was to have the character shed layer after layer as the story, and the truth, unfolded, and then, process reversed as the end of the play was near. Beads, skulls, rings, buttons, bones, coins and many other found objects were stitched everywhere on this costume.

FALL | 2015 – DIRECTOR: DáMASO Rodriguez

A scintillating contemporary drama centered around Billy, the only deaf member of his family, whose search for family acceptance as he delves into the Deaf Community sparks often funny but fierce tensions at home. Grappling with the significance of language and the urge to belong, this Portland debut follows triumphant productions Off-Broadway, at London’s Royal Court and Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.

My approach to this play was metaphor, family dynamics, color and texture. I examined specific objects from a hearing world - microphone, tuning fork, volume knob, frequency graph - to create a palette and color scheme for each character.

SPRING | 2015 – DIRECTOR: DáMASO Rodriguez

The irresistible rhythms of Cuban music drive this riveting, universal story of a man caught between countries, losses and loves, and his search for freedom. Set in America and Cuba, this timely tale reverberates across politics, ambition and romance with quick-witted dialogue, joy-filled dance and Latin-fusion beats. This Broadway-scale, contemporary musical features the internationally acclaimed, three-time Grammy-nominated band Tiempo Libre with a company of 21 actors, dancers and musicians in a not-to-be-missed theatrical event.

Set in Castro era Cuba - period, color, style and economics were the approach to the design. I used bright color to create the past/memory of Cuba, and black and white to define the moments of present day. A cast of New York actors/dancers playing numerous roles, and a dream ballet, made this premier musical challenging and exciting.

FALL | 2013 – Director: DáMASO Rodriguez

Dawn King's play Foxfinder is a dystopian parable exploring belief, desire and responsibility, set in a world both strange and familiar.

This production marked my first time working with Artists Repertory Theatre artistic director Dámaso Rodrìgez. In this production we created a world that was “future past and present” to disguise the production period as both past and future. I set the two worlds of the play apart by using only natural fabrics and fasteners (cotton, linen, bone, stone) for the country place and synthetics (nylon, metal, poly) for the city place. I worked closely with the scenic artist and prop master on the choices of all things related to each world to create a complemented environment in the total design.